Are you smart working and have transferred your office to your home? Do you want to organize  documents that you leave scattered on the desk, or do you want to change the arrangement of the furniture to improve your working conditions?

Then let us offer you some advice!

Choosing the room to work in…

Working at home, sometimes, may not give the same results than if you were in the office. The choice of the room and where to position yourself is very important to keep concentration high and be productive. Here are 3 simple tips for you.

• Try to create your own workspace. Opt for the room that can hold all the tools and devices you need, so you don’t have to go back and forth around the house and waste time.
• If possible, go to a room other than the one where you sleep. By moving to another room, used as an office, you prepare yourself psychologically to face your commitments methodically and professionally.
• Wall colours are also important. If the rooms in the house are painted in different shades, then choose one according to the work you’re doing. If your work is a creative, opt for blue shades. If you do a job for which calmness and relaxation are important, then your colour is green.

How to position the desktop or workstation in relation to the light

• Choosing the room, let’s see how to position the desk with the computer in relation to the light.
• Neither windows should be located in front of nor behind the desktop, so as to avoid those annoying reflections on the computer screen that disturb the view.
• The light must be parallel to the screen. If this is not possible, it is good to darken the window with blinds or something similar.
• Also pay attention to the desk on which the computer is placed and to the walls surrounding your work corner. Opt for non-glossy furniture and paints since the combination of these two elements can cause refraction effects.

How to arrange lighting devices

Now let’s focus on the luminous devices and their arrangement to favour a correct working condition, in the office as well as at home. First of all, remember that in a work environment there should always be the right balance between artificial and natural light. Having said that, here are some tips for carefully choosing lamps, spotlights, LEDs and other light sources.

• The light source must be warm, never cold, and must not exceed a colour temperature of 3,000 K.
• Opt for energy saving bulbs so your bills won’t go through the roof.
• Do not place the desktop workstations under a direct light source – be it a window in the ceiling, lamps or spotlights placed directly above or overhead and be sure not to place them centrally in the room.
• Move the computer away from you about 50-70 cm and adjust the brightness of the monitor so that it does not strain your eyes.

How to arrange shelves to store documents

Let’s imagine that you had to bring a lot of documents home to avoid going out as much as possible, and now you are desperate because you don’t know how to organize them. Follow these tips to have a clear workspace, keep an empty desk and fill the shelves.

• The first advice is to sort the documents into groups and subgroups. For example: office bills (group), water, gas, electricity (subgroup). This way finding the “key” folder and subfolders will be much easier.
• To store your suppliers’ invoices, use a single large folder. If you have one with rings then you can appoint each transparent sheet with a different supplier. If you have simple folders, use paper folders and paperclips to group them.
• Use different coloured folders and give each one a connotation, so it will be easier and faster to distinguish the content. For example: the folder with the documents to bring to the accountant blue, your projects orange, invoices red and so on.

Now that you have created your small home office, happy working!